This invention relates to a system designed for supplying foodstuffs, drinks and other products to a consumer who, in order to acquire a desired product, does not need to use money pieces or coins, nor does he have to register the consumptions made, but need only withdraw the desired products. The system includes devices which detect the extraction and register the amount of the consumed product, adding it to subsequent consumptions made by the same client.
Devices for supplying drinks, other devices for supplying foodstuffs and still other devices for supplying different products exist in the market. From a functional point of view, all these devices can be divided into two large groups, i.e. those which require the insertion of money pieces or coins in order to obtain the desired product, and those which do not require the introduction of money pieces or coins.
The first type of mentioned devices are, with regard to their end purpose and their construction, essentially different from the units of the present invention. The second type of mentioned devices have an end purpose which is similar to that of the units of the present invention. Generally, in order to take the desired product, the consumer has to press a push-button, and on doing so the product is released. The products are not generally visible to the consumer, and he therefore runs the risk of choosing a product which has become exhausted but which, nevertheless, is registered. All these devices ae constructed of electro-mechanical elements and are thus highly complex and have functional problems insofar as obstructions and breakdowns are concerned. When these elements are designed to supply drinks, they must function in a humid atmosphere, and thus the metallic materials with which they are constructed give rise to problems due to oxidation. When these units are designed to supply cooled drinks, the problems become worse due to the fact that the presence of cold and moisture causes breakdowns due to condensation in the electromechanical elements.
When these units include a device which registers the consumptions made, they have a very serious drawback in that each product can have only a limited number of values, generally between one and ten. Since these numerals can hardly ever correspond to the price of the products, the unit of the amount registered must be given a value, and the price to be paid by the consumer will be the product of the registered amount by such value. This has two drawbacks. Firstly, the registration does not correspond to the amount consumed, but it is only proportional thereto. Secondly, the prices of the various products are difficult to arrange in proper order, since if a low value is given to the proportionality factor the possible prices are very small and do not cover more than a small range, and on the other hand if a high value is given thereto the differences between the various products are excessive.
Another serious drawback of the previously described units is that due to their nature and construction they are rather bulky for a given number of bottles, thus resulting in two additional problems, i.e. the space taken up by the unit is not in proportion to its effective volume, and further the capacity of a cooling system, when employed, is too great for the actual cooling needs.